A (15:00)
No, not at all. So but that quickly went away. And then the, the first couple of us did the see some of the CQB portion with them with the, with the squadrons we were attached to. It put us through a CQB portion of green team and then the free fall stuff. And that's other than that, that's the typically it so and after that they stopped doing it because they created the direct support course, the very first one, I went through that one as well, that was there in 2006, but it was run by the Green Team cadre, the very first class in 2006 and that was 13 weeks and I think it's down to nine weeks now. And they teach you little bits of the basics of everything you guys need to do. Land navigation, OTBs, all those, you know, a little bit of roping with elevators and all that stuff. But that's really all that they didn't fully put us into, integrated into Green Team or anything like just portions that they thought would benefit us. And a lot of it was ojt. Yeah, I might. Some of my troop chiefs, like Tommy Valentine, took a lot of time off, off of his, of his time to help me with learning some stuff. And so did quite a few guys. I won't say their name because some of them are still active. Most of them are retired now. But, but yeah, a lot of it in the early days was just OJT learning why you're out there as a dog guy trying to figure it out. Um, but it, it took a while, I would say a couple years for them to truly understand the, the assets that they had in those dogs and how many lives they could save. And they, they, they really did save a lot of lives. And then they started using them so heavily to where there's actual times where you'd have to say, I can't, I can't send my dog. He's crushed, he's exhausted, he's fought. I'll give you an example. My dog, black rifle, Coffee actually did a story on him. A Coffee or die. He was shot in the head. 2007, it was an assault in Kandahar. Was supposed to be a low level target. We took fire right off the ramp coming out, RPGs, PKM. And then they were like, hey, as soon as we got off, got in our firing line and my team leader at the time has passed away now as well. He said, billy, I need that dog in that door. So the door is about 300 yards away. So we use a visible laser to direct the dogs. It's common knowledge now most people know that. So I lays the door, the dog goes in and as we're moving up to the door, everything stops, the firing stops, PKM's, RPGs, and then we move up to the door and I can see that from the door about 100 yards out. I can see the IR light off the back of my dog, but it's not moving. So you'll see the shadows in the room if it's moving. Right. So it's easy to know if the dog's on a bite or whatever he's doing. So I knew number one, he was either down or he's laying down. So as we got up closer, he was laying down next to two rugs and he was just focused on it. So now I know it's explosives. So I recall the dog. We step back a little bit, search the area before we go internally, then we go internal. And it was two fully loaded PKM's inside of the rugs. So ISR is telling us you got movers all over the place. It's turning into a basically a village sweep. They're sparkling. We got another guy we had in a garden area. So we move over to that location. They're sparkling and giving us location. So for me, as a handler, you really have to be very cautious and understand the wind direction, temperatures outside. All that comes into effect when you have an animal, because you have to set the animal up for success as best as you can. Right? So, and a lot of that's just going back to the basics. Throwing some grass up and seeing which direction the wind's going, then presenting yourself downwind so the dog can pick up the odor. And you know that if it's cold, the odor is going to sit low and when it's hot outside, that the odor flies up and it dissipates in the air very quickly. So all of those things have to go through your head as well as the other things that you're dealing with with the dog camera and everything else, the light systems on them and then utilizing them in that whatever operation. So going back to the guy in the garden, as you know, in the garden they have those like two foot walls that separate all of the different lanes of trees or whatever. So I checked the wind and I put my dog downwind from the actual where they were sparkling and the odor. And then I just lays the end of the wall where ISR was sparkling so that he could pick it up quicker. And that's exactly what he did. He jumped over the wall. He gets over there and he almost was cheating a little bit. He was using his ears, not really cheating, but he was using his ears and not his nose, which I prefer him to use. But he heard a sound and he's. And he just took off. And then you know how it slowly used to start hearing the guy start making noise. And so I recall the dog, we give the Guy instructions, stand up. He's refusing. Sent the dog again. Dog bit him again, called him back, told him to stand up. He stood up that time and then had a weapon and was eliminated. And then. So then they're like, hey, Billy, we need you to move to another area. There's a guy, Two guys ran into another compound, so we need to go check that out. So then we move over to that compound and one of the guys is trying to get in the dog door. So I pull off his. His lock cutters and we cut it, send the dog in. And the dog right away goes into the. Into this small outhouse and myself. And then next to Salter, roll up to that door. And there's two dudes in there with AKs. And the dog is going back and forth. We don't teach him that, like biting
